By Christopher A. Sawyer
The Virtual Driver

(April 14, 2013) In the summer of 1976, I was fresh out of high school, and an avid fan of Formula One. My brother Bill had stoked the interest in racing, but we all grew up interested in cars as a result of dad being an engineer at Ford. With five older brothers (including Bill) and two favorite colors (black and blue, you can guess why), I grew up in a house where Road & Track, Car and Driver and AutoWeek were voraciously read (again, thanks to Bill) and both Dan Gurney and Jim Clark were heroes.

To this day I remember Bill picking me up at school with a copy of Competition Press and AutoWeek (its name at the time) hidden away as he asked what would be the most radical F1 car I could imagine.

Not being especially imaginative, I tried my best, but came up with nothing special. That’s when he whipped out the hidden copy and showed me a picture that I could hardly believe: Tyrrell’s Project 34, a six-wheeled F1 car. I devoured the story, hoping that the unusual racer would beat everything else when it hit the track during my senior year.

Unfortunately, the Tyrrell had teething problems, and its unique front wheels were never given the same level of development as the standard-sized rears, putting it at a distinct disadvantage. Nevertheless, it finished one-two at the Swedish Grand Prix that year, and finished second in the torrential rain of the season-ending and championship-deciding Japanese Grand Prix.

That was the race Mario Andretti won in the Lotus 77, a.k.a. the “adjusta-car”. Its wheelbase and track were highly adjustable, and Lotus founder Colin Chapman appeared to be floundering after the long run of the Type 72 and broken promise of the Type 76. What no one realized at the time was that Chapman had abandoned the original idea behind the Type 77 — fine tuning the car to each circuit to get the best out of the tires — and was using it as a test bed for the car that would introduce ground effects to racing the next year, the Type 78.

American driver Brett Lunger, Mid-Ohio 1976, just days after he helped save Niki Lauda's life.

Mario Andretti, meanwhile, had spent 1975 with the Vels Parnelli team, getting more performance out of the handsome but flawed American-built car than it deserved. Created by Lotus 72 designer Maurice Philippe, the VPJ4 was bankrolled by Firestone. However, the tire maker left racing at the end of the 1974 season, just after the car made its debut at the Canadian and U.S. Grands Prix.

The team soldiered on, looking in vain for a new title sponsor, and dropped out of F1 after the Long Beach Grand Prix, the third race of the 1976 season. Unfortunately, no one bothered to tell Andretti, who learned about the team’s fate from National Speed Sport News editor Chris Economaki while Andretti sat on the grid at Long Beach.

Perhaps Andretti should thank Vel Miletich and Parnelli Jones for going into F1 half-heartedly, and leaving him high and dry after Long Beach. Without it, he might never have become F1 World Champion. He also would not have won a pivotal race, the Japanese Grand Prix, that decided the championship that year. James Hunt and Niki Lauda were a mere handful of points apart as the F1 circus arrived in Japan, and either could win the championship.

The 1976 season had started well for Lauda, and by the time the teams packed up and left Silverstone after the British Grand Prix, he had more than double the points of his nearest competitor, Hunt. With five victories to Hunt’s two, a consecutive championship (the first since Jack Brabham’s back-to-back 1959-1960 seasons) looked like a formality for Lauda. It very well might have been had his Ferrari’s rear suspension not failed as he entered the fast left-hand kink just before Bergwerk at the famed Nurburgring.

His Ferrari went through he catch fencing on the right-hand side of the track, up an embankment, and spun back into the middle of the track in flames. Guy Edwards was able to clear the Ferrari on the left, but American Brett Lunger’s Surtees TS19 could not do the same on the right. Harald Ertl’s Hesketh 308D was close behind, and knocked Lauda’s car into Lunger’s, which was now entangled with the Ferrari.

The collision caused Lunger’s fire extinguisher to activate. This momentarily damped down the fire, and allowed drivers Lunger, Edwards, Ertl and Arturo Merzario to extricate the struggling Lauda. Lunger jumped on top of the burning Ferrari, grabbed Lauda by his driving suit’s epaulets, and yanked him out of the car as Merzario undid Lauda’s belts.

In these days before the advent of cable news and the invention of the 24-hour news cycle, this story of heroism and bravery nevertheless received global coverage. Especially as it took place in an era when it was not unusual for professional racing drivers to lose their lives while pursuing their dreams. It also didn’t hurt that Lunger was a member of the DuPont family. He was a celebrity network news could relate to.

It wasn’t long after this that Bill and I were at Mid-Ohio for the Formula 5000 race and almost literally ran into Brett Lunger. No stranger to the American open-wheel road race series, Lunger had driven for Dan Gurney’s All American Racers F5000 team in 1974, skipped the 1975 season entirely to concentrate on his F1 role as James Hunt’s teammate at Hesketh Racing, and rejoined in 1976 driving a Lola T332 for Carl Hogan.

Despite Brian Redman’s ability to win with disgusting consistency, F5000 was the most exciting domestic race series. Mario Andretti and Al Unser Sr. were part of the series, running Lola T332s similar to Redman’s. Dan Gurney ran a factory team, as did Shadow, and even Danny Ongais joined in the fray, driving for the Interscope Racing team. Unlike today, when racing is so safe, sanitized, equalized and corporate, racing in the 1970s was exciting, very personal and drivers often competed in multiple major series.

So it was no surprise for Bill and I to stumble across Brett Lunger as he was walking to the pits that day. I had brought another brother’s Minolta SR-T 35 mm camera to the race, and was carrying it on a lanyard around my neck when Bill asked if it would be possible for me to take Lunger’s picture. Ever the gentleman, he stopped directly in front of me and smiled as I raised the camera to take a picture… and waited. The Minolta had through-the-lens metering, which required turning the aperture ring on the lens until it raised (or lowered) a needle with an open circle on its end to bisect a needle that pivoted on the other side of the opening. Get that needle inside of the other’s ring, and the picture should be perfect.

Or it would be if the needles moved. I continued to look through the lens at the smiling, chestnut-haired driver, but saw no needles in the viewfinder. None. Seconds ticked away and threatened to become minutes, and Bill — who I could see out of the corner of my eye — had a “What the hell is the matter with you? Take the damned picture!” look on his face as I continued to struggle. That’s when it dawned on me. The camera’s metering system was battery powered, and I had turned it off to save energy.

A quick twist of the knob atop the camera brought it to life. Putting the needle inside the ring with what must have seemed like light speed reflexes, I quickly snapped the picture and Lunger was on his way. A quick “Sorry about that” was mumbled in his direction, and met with an unexpected response: “Not a problem. I have a similar camera. I always forget to turn it on.”

It’s so nice when heroes turn out to be gentlemen as well as brave.

The Virtual Driver